wjfan417

3 hours ago, travelberlin said:

Hace a nice and safe cruise 🚢 . Lovely pictures from food and wines from

Portugal. We are planning to spend one week there next year. Can you recommend a hotel in Lisboa ?

 

Ivi

Hi Ivi,

We enjoyed our stay at Hotel Avenida Palace prior to our Quest cruise this past April-so much so that we booked it again when we finish up a cruise in Lisbon in September. Included breakfast was delicious and we received a discount in the hotel bar.

Diana

1 hour ago, Mackdogmolly said:

I’ll say one thing for Captain Tysse. On our Quest Christmas cruise, he was very straightforward about announcing daily COVID case counts, and it was much appreciated.

He did that on our April cruise also.

9 minutes ago, roberts2005 said:

I recently moved from explorer to explorer plus.  I was told any booking ashore must be done through loyalty.  Loyalty responded and told me I have until next May to book and there was no restriction on how far out.   
 

if I wait till my next cruise, which is the end of January, and I book a 7 day cruise onboard, is my only extra benefit a $100.00 OBC

 

If that’s the case I would think I’m better off booking now for 2023 to get the cabin I want.

 

Also, can this type of booking still be transferred to a travel agent?

It’s a $200 OBC and an extra $100 if you book in the first half of the cruise. There’s also a 50% reduced deposit. As far as I know it can still be transferred to an agent.

16 minutes ago, matador316 said:

First time Azamara cruiser here. I am confused about the OBC. Once on board, can you use your OBC to purchase the experience more packages? How about beverage upgrade packages?

Yes

8 hours ago, kaymoz said:

I just found out that the tour we want to do on our disembarkation day departs almost two hours earlier than we had anticipated, so I'm worried we won't be able to leave the ship in time.  Specifically, the pick up time is 8 am at a location across town from the dock, so we'd need to disembark at about 7 am.  Will Azamara allow this?  This would be on a day following an overnight in port, FWIW. 
This will be our first experience with Azamara, and we know that on many ships passengers  must often wait for disembarkation even if they keep their bags with them.  TIA

On our Quest cruise in April, we arrived in Barcelona the previous evening. Disembarkation instructions said passengers carrying their own bags could depart after 1 a.m.

12 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

I'm glad to hear this worked for you and that you had a good time.  I have booked many tours with them, but unfortunately those Spain cruises kept getting cancelled and then the one that sailed included excursions.

 

My one worry was that Spain Day Tours won't run the tour unless they get a minimum number, and Azamara ships are small (and the roll calls are therefore often not very active).  Was everybody on your SDT bus from the Azamara ship, or do they mix in passengers from other ships in port?

We have been on many Spain Day Tours trips that other Azamara passengers have booked- the minimum is only 10 so not difficult to reach. I started my own group with the for the first time on our August 30 cruise, and not difficult at all to reach the minimum by posting on the Roll Call.

Diana

We’re on a cruise in September where we dock in Leixoes for Porto. Trying to book a small group tour to either Douro Valley or city tour of Porto with tour operators we used from the city of Porto in April, and haven’t received responses from either. How difficult is it to get from Leixoes port to Porto using public transportation?

Diana

On 2/24/2022 at 10:58 AM, cleobella said:

Thanks for such great advise all, please keep it coming! We have tentatively booked the Avenida Palace Hotel, I think Rossio Train Station is a short walk away.  Do you think we can buy tickets to Sintra there?  I think Belem is only about 7 kms away so a taxi or tram ride for sure.   From what I am seeing here the very expensive private driver may not be needed?  I would love the convenience but we also have  a budget. Hopefully the Avenida Palace is nice, it seems to get good reviews and has been mentioned often on CC.  If possible we will drop off our luggage at the hotel and then head out to look around.  We are going to be disembarking on Sun Oct 20 and will also have Monday Nov 1 .  I thought we would be there for the national holiday, All Saints Day, but now see this is actually on the Wed.  So maybe I dont have to worry so much about which day we do some of the sightseeing and shopping. 

We stayed at Avenida Palace in April-liked in so much we’ve rebooked.

Great location-easy to walk in the area. You can take the train from Rossio Station (next to the hotel)  to Sintra. It’s easy to walk down to the tram that will take you to Belem. We used Uber from the hotel to port. A couple blocks up is the Gloria Elevator that will take you to the Bairro Alto neighborhood.

We’re doing a similar itinerary on Azamara. I’ve booked a tour to Santiago de Compostela from La Coruna with Spain Day Tours.

5 hours ago, islandwoman said:

How does Azamara's laundry treat delicates and cotton knits?

I just note to wash everything in cold water-haven’t had any issues.

37 minutes ago, Grandma Cruising said:

I agree, we prefer to use the laundry. They often do an offer for a bag. The bags look small, but it’s amazing how much you can squeeze into them if you roll everything up as tight as possible.

On our April Quest cruise, they offered a great laundry package-8 bags for around $110. They also had smaller and larger packages.

3 hours ago, Frode said:

Next week we'll board Azamara for the very first time (Pursuit from Lisbon, June 7th, 10 nights).
Can anybody for sure tell me: Will Azamara offer us the possibility to do a Covid test (PCR or Antigen) at the terminal during the check-in procedure? 🤫

We've got 4 vaccinations (two ordinary + two boosters), and have of course downloaded the EU Digital COVID Certificate downloadad at our phones.)

(Or is it necessary that we ourselves look for a place in Lisbon where we can do the test? We'll stay in Lisbon three nights ahead of the cruise. Any idea where we can do it...?) 
Thanks! Greetings from Sweden 👋

We stayed at Avenida Palace in April and there was a testing center set up by the Restauradores metro station.

4 hours ago, joyride said:

We ate at Prime C night one and at Aqualina night 2. Fabulous. More to come. Heading to MDR for breakfast and then in Cartagena, Spain today and we will go see the Andalusian Horses. WE did ships tour yesterday, walking tour of Valencia. There were only 10 people on the tour. Tonight we have the cruise critics meet and greet at 530 pm in the Drawing room, deck 10. I have much more to share and hopefully some pictures. Later.

Glad your meet and greet was a little later in the cruise than ours was in April. We had ours on boarding day at the same time as sail away so attendance was very poor-no officers either.

46 minutes ago, jwilcox said:

This good to hear. How did you go about making that happen? Whom would I talk to once we board to try to do that kind of upgrade?

They can upgrade the package at the bars.

Just received offers to bid on our 3 August cruises. Not sure whether it ‘s worth trying, because we’re in the same cabin for our first 2 cruises and then only move a few doors away. 

17 hours ago, jwilcox said:

One more questions - the Essentials package comes with the Premium Beverage package. Does anyone know if it is possible to upgrade the Premium Beverage package to the Ultimate Beverage package?

We upgraded after a few days on our April cruise. We paid the difference in cost (about $7) less our loyalty discount for each of the days we had it.

4 hours ago, KevintheIrishDJ said:

I am new to Azamara.  I believe there is no traditional dining.  How do you get your bottles?

 

We keep our bottles in our cabin.

10 hours ago, mjwaruba said:

Can  you only bring wine or spirits on board on embarkation day to consume or can you bring alcohol and consume them throughout the cruise? I know on RCCL any alcohol brought onboard during cruise goes into holding and is returned to your cabin on the last night of voyage. 

We’ve brought wine back from shore excursions to wineries and have either had it put on ice to drink in our cabin, or paid the corkage to drink with dinner.

Loved the Alaska cruise we did with Azamara a couple years ago. We were able to get much closer to glaciers than the larger ships. 

17 minutes ago, uktog said:

Totally agree 

Someone on the same cruise we were both on told me one of the few benefits they had from being in an Owner’s Suite was having the front row seating for the shows,

.

8 minutes ago, Riocca said:

Wines are changing all the time at the moment so a wine list won’t help. A couple of local Chiantis came onboard in Italy on the all included and they were pleasant.

Wine is subjective, but we’ve had no problem finding something we like.

I really wish they would bring more local wines on board when they’re in wine-producing regions.

Main dining room is much more casual than it used to be. Jeans are fine as long as they are not torn. We don’t take any dress clothes with us other than dockers/slacks and a blouse/shirt for Aqualina/Prime C.

4 hours ago, les37b said:

 

Flying out from Gatwick at 10am on Mon 6 June, so no chance of a pre flight PCR. (Antigen is no good as the boarding would be 1400 on the 7th.)

 

Friday is too early. Saturday my wife works, so Sunday is the only day that we can test and fits requirements. I can only find 1 company (Dam) who are open in London on Sunday and can get a PCR result before midnight. 24 hour result is no good. I don't want to arrive in Portugal to open my emails and find one of us is positive, miss the cruise and pay a fortune for quarantine and return flights.

 

The reason that particular Sunday is a bad one - London will be chocka. It's the queen's Jubilee. 

 

I faced an even worse scenario in Jan as my flight to MIA from LHR was 9.30am and US had a 24 hour window. My flight was on 2 Jan.... So finding a place open on New year's Day wasn't easy. I had to do a 120 mile round trip to the only place I could find, which was Randox at Stansted 

 

These days, everywhere is shutting down. Stansted isn't an option. I notice the Halo place at Heathrow has just closed.

 

 

When we were in Lisbon last month there were cubicles every few blocks giving Covid tests. We stayed at Avenida Palace and there was right next to it. I also saw one just a couple blocks from there.

3 hours ago, KEN31VA said:

It looks like I will have more OBCs (non refundable) than I can normally spend.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

Laundry packages, drink upgrades, Chef Table, bottles of wine

7 hours ago, yogagal47 said:

from their website:

 

• Will I have to take a SARS-CoV-2 test before or during my cruise? 

  Guests will no longer be required to undergo a COVID-19 antigen test while checking in at the terminal. To strive for a COVID-19 free environment, guests will be required to provide results from a negative COVID-19 test upon embarkation from a testing laboratory or other licensed testing site. Negative test results from at-home and/or self-testing kits are not accepted. Antigen COVID-19 testing is available for $59 USD in the terminal or on the boarding deck, and PCR testing is also available for $85 USD. Guests who are required to take a COVID-19 test before returning home can do so onboard for $59 USD for Antigen and $85 USD for PCR. Please contact Guest Relations while onboard for further information. Please note some governments and certain airlines require proof of a negative SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test no more than three days before entry or flight departure.

   

  I do not understand why they would not accept proctored/monitored EMED tests which are fully accepted for returning to the US. We also used them before a recent backroads trip

In another thread on the same topic, it said that Azamara does accept the proctored Emed tests.